Adversariality and maximizing true beliefs

Last week I was ‘touring’ in Scotland, first in St. Andrews for a workshop on medieval logic and metaphysics, and then in Edinburgh for a workshop on philosophical methodologies, organized by the Edinburgh Women in Philosophy Group. In the latter, I presented a paper entitled ‘Virtuous adversariality as a model for philosophical inquiry’, which grew out of a number of blog posts on the topic I’ve been writing in the recent past (here, here and here). Quoting from the abstract:

In my talk, I will develop a model for philosophical inquiry that I call 'virtuous adversariality', which is meant to be a response to critics from both sides [those who criticize and those who endorse adversariality in philosophy]. Its key feature is the idea that a certain form of adversariality, more specifically disagreement and debate, is indeed at the heart of philosophy, but that philosophical inquiry also has a strong cooperative, virtuous component which regulates and constrains the adversarial component. The main inspiration for this model comes from ancient Greek dialectic.

And so I gave my talk, and somewhat against the spirit of it, everybody in the audience seemed to agree with pretty much everything I had said – where are these opponents when you need them? But one person, Amia Srinivasan (Oxford), raised what is perhaps the most serious objection to any adversarial mode of inquiry, virtuous or not: it may well minimize our endorsement of false beliefs, but it does so at the risk of also minimizing our endorsement of true beliefs.

Indeed, there are two epistemic desiderata we should (and typically do) hold in high esteem: minimizing false beliefs and maximizing true beliefs. These two desiderata must be combined, otherwise we may end up concluding that not believing anything (which a fortiori minimizes endorsement of false beliefs) and believing everything (which a fortiori maximizes endorsement of true beliefs) are two excellent epistemic strategies. Obviously, both these strategies seem rather hopeless, and one popular proposal in the literature (especially in formal epistemology) is to focus on the concept of accuracy as a way to balance both desiderata.

Amia’s worry is spot-on, and indeed it is a 2500 year-old worry. (The day before, Ben Kotzee (Birmingham) had raised similar worries in conversation.) Socrates famously proclaimed that the only thing he knew is that he did not know anything, as his method of questions and answers would be well placed to purge interlocutors (himself included, at least in theory...) of mistaken beliefs and epistemic incoherences, but not to establish substantive, positive theses. (This point is related to some of my ideas on reductio proofs; a reductio proof is at first essentially a Socratic refutation, but the final step, from absurdity to the assertion of a thesis, falls outside the realm of refutation – and happens to be quite contentious, if you ask me…) So the method seems to be good at minimizing false beliefs, but seems to lack the resources to respond to the other, equally significant desideratum of maximizing true beliefs.

My response to Amia during Q&A, somewhat hand-wavely, was that the framework still had the resources to deal with this worry. As the Oxford-trained philosopher that she is, Amia was not going to let me get away with hand-waving, and in conversation after the session she wanted to hear in more detail how exactly this worry could be addressed within the framework of (virtuous) adversariality. I’m thankful to Amia for having been the perfect virtuous opponent, because she forced me to look more actively for a solution. As a matter of fact, it came from the other historical period I specialize in: medieval philosophy. (This solution, which I briefly sketched to her, seemed to placate Amia's main worries, at least temporarily...) 

As is well known, medieval scholastic philosophy developed a number of highly regimented forms of argumentation, indeed so regimented and ‘artificial’ that renaissance philosophers ended up rejecting them vehemently and mocking the hair-splitting nature of these debates. The ones most relevant for my purposes, unsurprisingly, are the ones discussed in section 2.6 of the SEP entry on literary forms of medieval philosophy, Disputation and Quaestio, and neatly defined by this passage quoted in the SEP entry:

A disputed question is a regular form of teaching, apprenticeship and research, presided over by a master, characterized by a dialectical method which consists of bringing forward and examining arguments based on reason and authority which oppose one another on a given theoretical or practical problem and which are furnished by participants, and where the master must come to a doctrinal solution by an act of determination which confirms him in his function as master. (Bazán 1985, 40)

As this passage correctly points out, the procedure is dialectical in nature; as in ancient dialectic, it begins by raising a question, usually one that would receive a yes/no answer. Here is an example from Buridan’s Questions on the Prior Analytics (incidentally, the text I was presenting on in St. Andrews): “Whether the definition of syllogism formulated by Aristotle is a good one.” Buridan goes on to present arguments on why it is not a good definition, then arguments on why it is a good definition. Once the two sides are argued for, it is decided which side has the stronger arguments, and a conclusion is reached (by a master, in the case of real-life disputations, or by the author, in the case of textual enactment of the disputation format.) (In case anyone is wondering: unsurprisingly, Buridan concludes that Aristotle's definition of a syllogism is fine as is.)

Thus, different from the original Socratic method, a positive conclusion is reached at the end of such medieval disputations. Another favorable feature of the model is that, once a conclusion is reached, its defender must go back to the arguments against the chosen position, and argue that they are not compelling/convincing after all. As noted by E. Sweeney in the SEP entry, this model has been accurately described as the ‘institutionalization of conflict’ – so it’s no surprise that it comes so close to my idea of virtuous adversariality. 

As a matter of fact, I think that much of what is done in philosophical papers these days follows more or less loosely this format: state a thesis, raise possible objections, respond to them etc. It is indeed a general principle that I teach my budding students who are still learning to write philosophy essays. But perhaps we all too often fail to appreciate how thoroughly dialectical/dialogical this whole procedure is, and how the very idea of looking at an issue from both sides has an essential adversarial component. Moreover, and more importantly for this post, this approach seems to offer a response to the worry of not being conducive to the maximazation of true beliefs which plagues ancient dialectic, and thus to provide a fruitful model for philosophical inquiry in general.

Conclusion: Go medievals! Go virtuous opponents!